Health Services: Cross-border Cooperation
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of differing NHS (a) targets and (b) waiting lists in England and Wales on patients living in border communities.
Answered by Karin Smyth
The devolution of health is a long-standing policy, and no assessment has been made.
For patients living in border communities, we expect local health care services to work closely to ensure differing targets and waiting lists are managed appropriately and effectively to meet the needs of the communities they serve.
We work closely with partners across the devolved administrations to provide support and share best practice to reduce waiting lists. This includes sharing learning as the National Health Service in England makes progress toward delivering the Government’s ambition of ensuring that 92% of patients will wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment, in line with the NHS constitutional standard, by March 2029.
The Government has now exceeded its pledge to deliver two million extra operations, scans, and appointments in England, having delivered 4.2 million additional appointments.
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